Undertow: Scars
by SurelyForth
Summary: A terrible morning begets a good night as Brand and Anders are able to spend some time alone. One-shot that takes place after Ch. 31 of Undertow. Contains mild spoilers. Rated M for stuff.


**Author's Note:** Soooo, crazy story: I have a behemoth of a tale entitled _Undertow _that is 31 chapters in (and a behemoth). In the course of writing said monster, sometimes I have ideas for scenes that, for whatever reason, don't fit the flow of the story, or that contain _no _story. _Scars _is one such scene: Brand Cousland and Anders unwind after a terrible day. Stuff ensues.

If you haven't read _Undertow_, I would recommend trying it first (of course) but if you just want some random smut of questionable quality between a Cousland and her mage, then feel free to read on.

Oh, and this is rated M.

And** Dragon Age**, Anders and Nathaniel belong to BioWare and not me.

* * *

It was time for bed, and Bryce was much more interested in watching Nathaniel restring his bow.

There had been a time, before Teagan's death, when Bryce could get caught up in Nate almost as easily as he could Anders. Teagan had even taken Bryce with them to hunt once, a fun idea turned disastrous when they learned the hard way that, to a three year-old, every animal was a family pet.

Now Bryce was seated carefully out of Nathaniel's light, his head lowered as the man twisted a length of linen that would eventually be wound into a second strand. Brand watched her son in amusement, continually amazed at the things that could fascinate him. He had little interest in swords or shields, unless they were brightly colored or elaborately designed, but _this_ was absolutely fascinating.

"He can stay up with me, if he wants," Nathaniel barely looked at her when he made his offer. "I'm keeping watch first, anyway," he indicated the common room that was the center of the small suite of rooms they'd rented for the evening. "I can put him to bed when he's tired."

From the looks on their faces, Bryce and Anders thought this was a _wonderful_ idea. Still, Brand hesitated for a moment, knowing what was going to happen as soon as she and Anders were alone. Nathaniel would hardly approve of his generosity facilitating such shenanigans.

"Bryce, will you behave?" This was Anders, who recognized her pause for what it was. "Do whatever Nathaniel tells you, ok?"

Bryce nodded and allowed his mother to smother him in affection and good nights before he returned to his watch, his head cocking to the side in intense observation, his fingers going to scritch at Pounce, who remained curled at his side.

Alone with Anders, it took a few minutes to transition from _in a room with child_ to _hidden from view_. He secured the lock on the door and she busied herself with removing her jewelry.

"Do you think we need a furniture barricade?" He indicated the locking mechanism, which was heavy iron and looked as if it could withstand a battering ram.

"No, and what furniture could we use? The bed is the only thing substantial enough to be effective and I've other plans for it."

"Hmm, and here I was just going to take you against the wall," he moved to where she stood in front of the small mirror that hung above the basin. His hands found her waist and he automatically pulled her back to him, his chin resting on her shoulder. She could see their reflection in the mirror and it was the first time she'd ever even _thought_ of what they looked like together.

"You're quite handsome, you know," she turned her head towards his, and he planted a kiss at the corner of her mouth, his lips warm and whisper soft.

"I _do_ know," he smiled against her cheek. "Although I'm sometimes surprised that _you_ think so."

"Why is that?" Her eyebrow went up as he moved away to sit on the edge of the bed, beckoning her to follow. She stopped between his knees so he could reach behind her to undo the laces of her dress, the knot he'd tied himself that morning yielding easily to his touch.

"Well, Teagan for one thing," he started loosening her bodice. "I think every woman at the Vigil had a crush on him, to make no mention of some of the _men_."

Brand nodded, and busied her hands with his hair. The tie that held it back came away and she pushed her fingers through the strands, which were cool against warming skin, and then ran her fingernails gently along his scalp.

"Then there's _Alistair_," he leaned back, and made a face that could be best described as _wow_. "Even with the haggard thing, he's..."

"_Hot?_" Brand turned around so he could, ostensibly, finish with her dress.

"Something like that," his palms worked up the side of her legs, pushing her skirt to her waist. "When was it that you first thought 'Anders is awesome'?"

"Is this foreplay? Hearing me talk about you?" she looked over her shoulder and she could see his contented smirk as he darted his gaze up.

"I have a theory."

"Ok," she stared at the ceiling, more inclined to focus on the brush of his hands as they moved beneath her skirt. "Well, I think it was when we were in the mines, and the Architect threw me into the cell without a stitch of clothing on. I remember being so grateful that I woke up in your shirt and _not_ to all of you ogling my chest."

She felt his mouth press into the small of her back, just above the band of her now exposed smallclothes, and it was such a tiny gesture, and hardly the most risqué thing they'd done, but it seemed so _intimate_, his hot breath _there_ and his hands holding tight to her hips.

"You know why I did it, don't you? Besides the fact that I am a decent human being. Of course."

"_Of course_," Brand laughed. "Why did you do it?"

"Because I didn't want Nathaniel to see you," he was pulling her smallclothes down, and his teeth were _definitely_ involved in the process. Just the idea of it sent a shudder of desire through her, shivers shooting away from where he touched.

"He wouldn't look, not with Velanna there," she stepped out of her undergarments, which he'd allowed to drop to her ankles while he continued his love affair with her backside. His hand slid indolently along the inside of her leg to where it intersected with the rest of her body and her feet pushed up on their own accord, already anticipating how it would feel when he, inevitably, found the center of her with his determined and searching fingers.

"You were _naked_," as if that explained _everything_. He even accented this with a tongue intensive kiss at the base of her spine, the sensation pulsing straight through her. "And Nate, like me, had been following _this_," he grabbed at her backside with both hands, "and watching it run out in front of us for _weeks_."

"So _you_ were jealous that another man would look at me, huh? I never pegged you as the type," Brand turned around to face him again, her dress falling from her shoulders as she did so. He watched her remove it, his eyes following its slide down her long arms, past bared hips, to collapse to the floor in a pool of pale green linen at her feet. For a moment he just stared at her and there was a purpose to his gaze that made it almost like a physical thing that was running itself softly over her skin.

"Not jealous," his shirt came off in a single motion and he moved backwards on the bed. She joined him, stretching out on her stomach. "Just...I don't really know why I didn't want Nate looking at you. Maybe I _did_ just do it because I'm a good person, but told myself it was something else. It worked out for me, though, since you refused to put on anything else until we found your armor."

"We are both strange ones, then," Brand rested her head on her arms, face turned so she could see him. "I still don't think he would have looked. Things were so tense between us, and I'm so... _scarred_. If anything, I should be surprised that _you_ find _me_ attractive. I've seen some of the women you've been with, and…well. _You _know."

"The _women_! And we haven't even gotten to _your_ women, yet," he hung his head back dramatically. "But I want to know why it always comes back to the _scars_ with you. You really don't think I mind, do you?"

"No, I know _you_ don't," she propped her chin on her hands and stared ahead. "When I look at myself, they're all I see anymore. The things that caused them have come to define me more than anything else in my life. There are a few that make me happy, but most of them remind me of horrible things, horrible places and horrible people. They're also all pretty ugly. Before the Landsmeet, I arranged for Alistair and Anora to marry," she ignored Anders incredulous smirk. "And I remember thinking 'He's upset _now_, but when he sees her naked for the first time, he'll forget all about me'. I wasn't angry, or jealous; it's just how things happened for me."

Anders rolled to his side and traced down her back with a solitary fingertip, running it along the wound caused by the Archdemon. As it disappeared around her side, out of his view, he leaned forward and kissed her shoulder, his lips lingering there as if he were considering something of utmost importance.

"I wish you would have known me before all this," Brand broke the silence before she could completely lose herself to his odd and reassuring embrace. "Before I lost my family, before I became all death-defying and…_this_."

"I made it to Highever, once. It was my…fifth escape," he pulled her closer, his mouth right at her ear. "Had I any idea that the teryn had a beautiful daughter just _dying_ to corrupt me, things might have turned out much differently for us. Granted, Princess Brandelyn may have been frightened by a wild-eyed apostate."

"And young Apostate Anders wouldn't be wary of an overeager princess?" She muscled him so that she could push him flat on his back. "No concerns that it was just a nefarious plan to get revenge on a knight who had scorned her, or a ploy for more attention from a disinterested suitor? Or just being used to sate her own appetite?"

She was now on her hands and knees above him, and the mood became heavy with tension. Heat radiated up from him, pulses of desire crackling from his bared skin to hers, and she could feel him shifting his hips below her, the friction of his pants deliberate against the inside of her thighs. His eyes gave the most away, though, as dark as they had become with _want_.

"Any concerns would have disappeared the moment you touched me," he reached up to palm her cheek, his thumb running along the mark on her chin just as it had seconds before he kissed her in Amaranthine. He smiled the crooked half-grin that made her heart kick itself into double time. "I am _remarkably_ easy, after all."

"I've heard. So, what was your theory?" She bowed her head to his throat, where her tongue, drawn slowly from his collarbone to his jaw, evoked a low moan.

"My theory is that you wanted me the moment you saw me," despite the gall of the words, there was something vulnerable there. "I must have looked incredibly _impressive_ having beat back all those darkspawn, the last man standing in my pitiful _robes_."

Brand was moving down his chest while he spoke, one hand already giving away her ultimate destination.

"I was amused. By your _hands_," her mouth brushed against his stomach, just above the waistline of his pants. She smiled up at him as the laces came undone at her touch. "You were so..." she felt her cheeks go red at the memory. _Brand, your hand is down his pants and you're blushing over _that_?_ "Maybe you're right, a little. At the very least, you _did_ make an impression."

"So theory confirmed," his hips crept up so she could free them with a bit more ease and, with the help of his kicking legs, he was naked beneath her. He made a noise as if he were going to say more about this _theory_, but she caught him in her mouth before he could commit to anything comprehensible and it turned into something low and guttural in his throat. Smiling wickedly, she teased the tip of him with her tongue, her carefully trained grip handling the rest, and there was a genuine thrum of pleasure that went through her as he responded exactly as she'd hoped- fingers curling resolutely into her hair and his hips fighting to stay their position.

"You know," his back arched as she wrapped her lips around him again and moved down the length of his erection. "You're not too bad at this. I'm starting to think you're _not_ the prim and proper lady that I fell in love with."

She sat up at this, a wide grin on her face as she failed, and spectacularly, to feign indignation.

"Did I say you could stop?" He nudged the inside of her leg with his knee, the joking gesture catching her off-balance and sending her toppling backwards off of the bed.

The thick wool rug bore the brunt of the impact, but Brand let out an entirely unsexy _Oof_ as her hip bone hit the floor. Anders' head appeared over the edge of the bed, his face twisted in concern that was trying desperately to not turn to outright amusement.

"You can laugh if you want," Brand propped her feet up next to him. "But _you_ are coming to _me_..."

So he did, his hand wrapping itself around her ankle, and his lips trailing along her calf as he slithered to the floor in a surprisingly graceful movement, settling with his upper back against the bed and his waist between her knees.

"Are you really all right?" His hands ran up the back of her thighs, parting them further. From her position in front of him, feeling simultaneously exposed and yet enveloped by a growing sense of _just fuck me already_, she could see that having her there in front of him like that was undoing his control, too.

"I'm fine," she pressed at his sides with her knees to reassure him. "I might be bruised in the morning, but at least this won't leave a lasting mark."

But he'd stopped listening at _fine_, instead taking her hands to pull her up until she was comfortably straddling him.

And then it was about their _mouths_, which hadn't really touched once since they'd entered the room, and his lips were hot and pressing hard as damnable restraint, concern at hurting, or about this being the wrong time _maybe,_ disappeared until it was just _them _and _lust _pushing at their skin and sparking across the planes and curves of their bodies.

They continued this way for several long moments, his feverish hands running the length of her back and then lowering to take her hips, curving in and pulling her against him as close as he could without actually penetrating her. She imagined how she must feel against the lowest part of his abdomen, damp and ready and then she _gasped_ as he took it upon himself to find her, his fingers drawn to the dark tangle of hair without provocation.

"You're so hot," his teeth were working at her neck, the spot by her ear that normally made her melt but, this evening, made her rock against his hand. "When I'm inside you, I can't tell where I start anymore."

She turned her head to kiss him again, her skin _everywhere_ aflame and she didn't know where she started anymore _either_ as she sank towards him, arms winding around his neck and fingertips digging into his back as she pulled him nearer and nearer, as if there could be anything _nearer_ than the two of them on the floor of that room.

The switch from _fingers_ to _him_ was somewhat a surprise; precise strokes giving way to hard thrusts as her hips took on a life of their own in response to his fervent pressing upward. Control, bare as it had been before, was completely abandoned as they moved against one another, sweat-slick and biting into each other with nails and teeth, her throat bearing nearly as much of his lust as any other part of her. She retaliated by dragging her fingernails hard up his back, not that she expected anything to come of it as he laughed in her ear and whispered with almost unendurable charm, "_Healer_."

"Then heal _me_," her fists clenched against him as muscles in her thighs grew tight, anticipating the release that was drawing closer and closer with every pulse beat.

He understood without further instruction, his hands at her waist inching back to position themselves above where she'd hit when she fell. For a moment, he waited, his forehead pressing against hers, their eyes opened and suddenly locked on one another. He was there, her Anders, but he was also lost within a larger version of Anders that existed somewhere beyond the confines of what they'd done so far, to what they were capable of...

_This._

She closed her eyes and focused down on where he was moving in and out of her, every stroke expanding something in her, something bright and full and _up_ and when he finally gave in to her request, blue light visible even behind her eyelids, there was a wonderful moment of relief, followed by nothing, followed by _everything_ as what should have been at least twenty or thirty pulses away was right _there_ and she felt herself closing down around him, spilling over as her bones disappeared into flesh and muscles and the expanding _something_ pushed up around her ears to render her dizzy and euphoric.

Then, as if using her as a conduit, he allowed the faintest spark of at the base of her spine, the muscles it touched and passed through contracting within her and around him and they cried out in unison, his arms pinning her against his chest as if she might fall into nothingness after so _much_.

Into nothingness and away from _him_.

_Away from him_ was impossible after that, their limbs largely useless for anything but touching as she leaned forward over him, cheek on his shoulder, and they allowed the world they'd been outrunning for the past several minutes to catch back up.

It was an eon of mending breaths, of contented sighs and her kissing his collarbone while he ran his hand up and down her back, his touch finding that scar again and tracing it as if he were shaping it himself, every pass accompanied with a golden glow that was returning their strength and encouraging the stirrings of renewed desire.

"I know the stories behind nearly all of your scars; those I've healed and those that found you before I did," he kissed her forehead and she found herself caught on his smile, slightly wicked but also incredibly affectionate. "And I've never wished that I knew you before you had them, unless, of course, it was to mourn all the trouble we could have been getting ourselves into in the interim."

She stretched up to kiss him, her hand sliding into the damp hair at the base of his neck as she did exactly what she should have done the first time he'd expressed this sentiment: a passionate embrace, eyes that betrayed nothing more than complete and utter adoration and then a sincere _I love you, too._

_I love you, too_ because she'd be a fool not to, and she was ready to put those days behind her.


End file.
